


Future, and it doesn't work

by PersonalSpin



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Favourite bunch of broken toys, Gen, Serious!fic, Steve Has Issues, They all have issues, feels everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 16:57:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersonalSpin/pseuds/PersonalSpin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a pyrrhic victory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Future, and it doesn't work

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song by the same name, which you can go and download for free [here](http://www.8bitpeoples.com/discography/8BP099?show=all). I heard it for the first time over the credits of Digital: A Love Story, which you should also [download](http://scoutshonour.com/digital/) because it is a brilliantly written game (and you hack the Gibson!) I won’t spoil the ending -- it’s sad but hopeful, and I tried to write that. Dunno how much I succeeded. The beginning was also inspired by A Matter of Life and Death, and just try watching the start of that without having Steve!feels everywhere, I dare you.

Steve was never given the luxury of believing he was dead. He’d been so certain that death was rushing towards him, ice and freezing water, and had wondered with a sort of detached curiosity what happened next. He supposes that’s as dead as any living man can be, but he’d never quite managed to think he’d jumped that final hurdle. The cold had been a moment of such piercing shock, something he’d felt through his whole body, that it had ripped all thought from him before he could draw breath to scream.

That same cry of pain and grief was still lodged in his throat when he woke up, seventy years too late. He never would’ve believed it if he hadn’t run headlong into the street and been smacked by the reality of it. Seventy years, and it felt like a matter of heartbeats from the certainty to the cold to looking up at the ceiling of the fake hospital room and swallowing back the urge to shriek.

It’s a pyrrhic victory. What other word is there for cheating death, only to find the world, the war, and everyone he loved had marched steadily on without him? Another such victory and he would be alone. They’d apparently won the war too, but the memory of it seems to have faded like old photographs nobody looks at anymore, because seventy years proves not long enough for the world to learn from its mistakes but plenty of time for it to make new ones, and sometimes even the old ones but in new, creative ways. And maybe that’d been a pyrrhic victory too.

Another adage, perhaps not quite as ancient, also proved true; the more things change, the more they stay the same.

That’s what he thinks when he sees Bruce, painfully mild Bruce, who goes through the world looking shell shocked until he doesn’t, when there’s little left of the man he knows is inside staring out of the Hulk’s beady eyes. He lives in a warzone, but he’ll never get any medals for it because it’s all inside his own head, a constant war with the rage that’s no less real than the bullets flying overhead. Steve has to swallow the feeling of injustice, and wishes he could tell Bruce it’ll get better.

He thinks the same when he finally sees Natasha and Clint working together. He doesn’t know if they’re lovers or not but he supposes it doesn’t matter; when one reaches out the other clasps their hand, and Steve isn’t sure if it’s because they’re afraid to let go or just afraid of being alone again. They orbit each other, and Steve can see it every time they share a look, as often as they share meals and chairs and jokes: I have been through hell with you and would do it again if you asked. Steve swallows the jealousy, missing Bucky so much it hurts, and wonders if they would start a war for each other.

Thor should have been different, having lived long before any adage and likely long after they fade too, but even he can’t help the look that crosses his face when he thinks no one is looking. It’s something Steve recognises when on the topic of murderers and traitors and liars; confusion, hurt, betrayal, all of it starkly obvious, but also the simple question of why. Even gods, he thinks with a sinking feeling, and swallows the bitter truth of it.

He sees Howard Stark in every breath and movement and stupid idea Tony has, and he thinks maybe he could learn to enjoy the familiar when it’s not followed by wrenching heartache. Steve makes the mistake of mentioning it though, and Tony spits with rage at the memory of a man Steve doesn’t think he recognises. With no way of ever being certain and Tony so much less the man his father was, two decades already in the ground and Steve’s used to feeling like too little too late, he swallows the heartache as well.

Steve’s almost choking, and he wonders desperately how the world can work when everyone in it is miserable and broken and no one’s even trying to pick up the pieces. He has to believe it’s possible though, and he clings to that hope because he doesn’t think he can do this without it.

The Chitauri invade, lead by just another miserable and broken person, and Steve wields his hope like his shield because there is nothing left.

Somehow, and he’ll never be able to explain it to anybody who asks, they do it. Steve thinks that Bruce might be gaining ground in his war; that Natasha and Clint might realise they’re not alone without each other; that Thor might be OK without ever knowing why. Steve wonders how he could have ever thought so little of Tony, who is the bravest man he’s ever met.

He sits back and stares at the dusty and ruined city around him, no less broken than the people living in it, but Steve can breathe again. “We did it,” he says, and he thinks maybe he means he can do it, all of it. The wishes for things he can’t have but might one day, the heartache and the bitter truths that don’t change but might get better. The future, and it doesn’t work and it might never do, but that’s OK. It’s still there, imperfect and lovely, and he’s finally ready to start living in it.

 


End file.
